Flooring in Florida

mandysbabaJuly 29, 2011

We will be relocating to Florida, and the house we bought has old icky carpet in the bedrooms. We want to replace the carpeting (we have zero carpet in our present home) with maple floors. Any suggestions for reliable flooring stores and/or contractors? Hard to know where to look in a new city. We will be in Plantation (Ft. Lauderdale area.) Thank you.

I'm in North Central Florida, so unfortunately I don't have any useful recommendations. There's plenty of Lumber Liquidators in Florida. They are, at the very least, a good place to start looking and getting some pricing info.

One of the problems you will likely run into is that most houses in Florida are built on a slab and don't have any subfloor, so you'll either have to put in a subfloor (can get costly) if you want to do nail down and finish on-site or you'll have to do some kind of pre-finished, engineered floating floor. I had a lot of installers recommend against glue down because of the humidity levels in Florida causing too much expansion of the glue itself (rather than the wood).

Good luck with your move! I lived in south Florida for a long time. It's terribly fun and you'll love the beaches... just stay off the freeways. Ha.

Wood is a BAD idea in Florida! However, if you like the "look", there's an excellent new tile out you'd swear was wood slats! It comes in what must be 4x18" pieces. I rent / rehab / flip homes & even I was very impressed with it. Remember, your putting this on a concrete floor base.... no wood.